Sustaining Nature, Supporting Health
The Stanford Center for Human and Planetary Health advances solutions that improve both health and sustainability.
Explore our Focus Areas
The Center for Human and Planetary Health aims to support all research, education, and impact at Stanford that connects human health with the environment. We have identified four main themes where this work typically happens, with additional areas continually emerging.
Climate and Health
Promoting the health of vulnerable populations by exploring climate change mitigation and adaptation solutions, addressing issues that arise from extreme weather, wildfires, natural disasters, extreme heat, eco-anxiety, displacement, and other climate-related impacts.
Image credit: Moniruzzaman Sazal / Climate Visuals Countdown
Pollution and Health
Understanding and reducing the harm from pollution on the health of humans and the environment by redesigning business models and processes to reduce air, ocean, and land pollution, support health, and build more resilient and equitable economies.
Image credit: Abir Abdullah / Climate Visuals Countdown
Disease Ecology in a Changing World
Investigating the ecological, environmental and socioeconomic determinants of diseases transmitted through the environment, projecting their future distributions under scenarios of climate change, and developing ecological solutions to improve human health and protect the health of the environment that underpins it.
Image credit: Anthony Ochieng / Climate Visuals Countdown
Food Systems, Health and the Environment
Generating knowledge to develop a food system that provides healthy affordable human nutrition while supporting thriving biodiverse terrestrial and aquatic environments, and reduces carbon emissions from the agricultural sector.
Image credit: Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment
One Year of Impact
HPH by the Numbers
Average # of Stanford research projects on HPH topics per year
Total # of Stanford publications on HPH topics since 2021
Average # of HPH courses offered per year
HPH postdoctoral fellows since 2020
HPH early career research grants since 2022
HPH seed grants to interdisciplinary research teams since 2017
Recent News
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Schistosomiasis infects millions of people each year. Researchers at Stanford and in Senegal are working to reduce disease transmission in rice paddies, make food systems more productive and sustainable, and boost local economies – with the help of fish.
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The 2026 Stanford Global and Planetary Health Research Convening brought together people from Stanford and around the world to share research and imagine effective paths forward during a moment of global change.
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An ambitious initiative is tackling the pervasive issue of lead contamination, which exerts a heavy toll on global health. Researchers aim to identify major sources of lead exposure and develop affordable detection methods in communities worldwide.
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